Manual sorting

You can sort notes by right-clicking the parent note in the Note Tree and selecting Advanced -> Sort notes by ... This will sort existing notes, but will not automatically sort future notes added to this parent note.

The sorting dialog allows:

Automatic/Permanent Sorting

Child notes can be automatically sorted by attaching specific labels to the parent note:

Label Description
#sorted

Keeps child notes sorted by title alphabetically.

When given a value, it will sort by other criteria instead: a comma-separated list of levels, each title, dateCreated, dateModified or the name of a label on the child notes, optionally followed by asc or desc, as in a search's orderBy. For example #sorted="priority desc, dueDate" sorts by priority, highest first, and notes of equal priority by due date. A child note without a level's label sorts after every child that has it, whichever direction the level runs in. When neither note has the label, the next level decides.

#sortDirection

If sorted is applied, specifies the direction of the sort:

  • ASC, ascending (default)
  • DESC, descending

A level of sorted followed by its own asc or desc keeps that direction regardless.

#sortFoldersFirst If sorted is applied, folders (notes with children) will be sorted as a group at the top (at the bottom when #sortDirection is desc), and the rest will be sorted.
#sortNatural Sort numbers naturally instead of alphabetically, so 2 comes before 10.
#sortLocale The language code driving the natural sort (e.g. zh-CN, de). Only meaningful together with #sortNatural.
#top If sorted is applied to the parent note, keeps given note on top in its parent.
#bottom If sorted is applied to the parent note, keeps given note on bottom in its parent.

Sorting is done by comparing note properties or specific labels on child notes. There are four sorting levels, with the first having the highest priority. Lower priority levels are applied only if higher priority comparisons result in equality.

  1. Top Label Sorting: Child notes with the #top label will appear at the top of the folder.
  2. Bottom Label Sorting: (Introduced in Trilium 0.62) Child notes with the #bottom label will appear at the bottom of the folder.
  3. Property/Label-Based Sorting: Sorting is based on the parent note's #sorted label:
  4. Alphabetical Sorting: Used as a last resort when other criteria result in equality.

All comparisons are made string-wise (e.g., "1" < "2" or "2020-10-10" < "2021-01-15", but also "2" > "10").